I Ask for Desire When I Really Mean Comfort

When is someone, I say, when is someone
I say. Leg framing skirt, quiet mouthful
awake counting. Useless day’s angle.
It’s been a while since I’ve asked what
I mean to someone, and I thought
if I made loneliness a private matter
it wouldn’t be called that. A knot’s slip;
a single dish. A name sent through
a window is half-given. Can I say a season
I haven’t weathered? How many times
have I seen the same bird twice?
Grip to appetite, the street’s spacious
empty has me holding my breath.
I grasp my slim life from the waistline.

Rachel Cruea is an MFA candidate at the University of Colorado-Boulder, where she teaches creative writing as a GPTI. Along with serving as the managing editor of TIMBER journal, she is a poetry editor for GASHER journal. Her work has previously appeared in editions of The Adroit Journal, Jet Fuel Review, The Boiler, and has work forthcoming in Whiskey Island. She is originally from Ohio.